The Sheboygan County courthouse on Monday September 14, 2015
Sheboygan County was created in 1836 by the Wisconsin Territorial legislature, but the legislature did not provide for any sort of county government until 1838. This is the date the county was “organized” and that is usually the date given for when the county was founded. The county was created from land that had been part of Brown County.
Native American tribes had lived along the western shore of Lake Michigan for a long time before European explorers began to visit the area in the 17th century. The name of the county comes from the Native American word Schwab-we-way-kum meaning a great noise underground. This probably refers to the sound of the Sheboygan River falls.
The area that is now Sheboygan County was probably visited by French explorer Father Jean Nicolet in 1635. As settlers moved west, conflicts arose with the Native American tribes. In 1833 a treaty was signed in Chicago in which the Native Americans gave up their rights on the western shore of Lake Michigan, and this opened the floodgates in terms of European settlement in the area. The first permanent settlement was in 1834 at the site of what is now Sheboygan Falls.
The county seat is the city of Sheboygan, which is located at the mouth of the Sheboygan River. The city was founded in 1846. By 1849 the city was known for its German population, because many refugees from the failed German Revolution of 1848 emigrated to the United States and settled in the area.
The Sheboygan County courthouse is located at 615 North 6th Street in Sheboygan. The current courthouse was built in 1933 on the site of the old courthouse (built in 1868) which it replaced. An addition was built in 1956 and interior renovations were done in 1968. I visited on Monday September 14, 2015 at about 9:00 a.m. The courthouse building looks very similar to the Outagamie and Winnebago County courthouses; they were all built in the 1930s. I walked around the courthouse and then over to the Riverview Park for some pictures of the Sheboygan River and the harbor. The courthouse is in a very nice setting and I enjoyed my walk in Riverview Park.
I have a number of connections with Sheboygan County. I remember as a child visiting the Old Wade House near Greenbush. This is an old stagecoach inn which was restored to its condition before the Civil War. I remember very little about the tour of the house, but I do remember the nifty glow in the dark compass I got in the gift store!
Some family friends moved to Sheboygan Falls when I was in junior high school, and I went to Road America in Elkhart Lake for a car race once when I was in high school. I also went to Sheboygan when the Gesangverein Concordia Sheboygan hosted the annual Kommers competition among the Wisconsin German choirs.
I think my most enduring link to Sheboygan County was with Lakeland College, which is located in Plymouth, just outside of Sheboygan. Or at least that’s where the main campus is located; there are a number of centers scattered around the state, plus an online program. I taught computer science and math at the Madison Center beginning in 1995 and continuing through 2006. I also taught several courses in their online program, starting around 1997 or 1998. I didn’t enjoy teaching in the online program very much mostly because the software we used was just too primitive.